


Time And Relative Dimension

by sheliesshattered (glasscannon)



Series: For As Long As We Get [5]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Dancing, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s08e09 Flatline, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Married Couple, POV Twelfth Doctor, Post-Episode: s08e09 Flatline, Slow Dancing, Whouffle Week (Doctor Who), newlyweds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27909046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/sheliesshattered
Summary: After their encounter with the Boneless, the Doctor and Clara return to her flat, bringing an end to their month-long honeymoon. With the rest of their life together ahead of them — however long or short that might be — Clara comes to a difficult decision.Post-episodeFlatlineAU, part five in the on-going seriesFor As Long As We Get, but can be read as a stand-alone.
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: For As Long As We Get [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642132
Comments: 19
Kudos: 38
Collections: Whouffle Week 2020





	Time And Relative Dimension

“Right,” Clara sighed as she stood in the open doorway of the TARDIS. “I need to— to look at my lesson plans for the week, and do some laundry in a machine I know won’t try to ‘improve’ my clothes as it washes them.”

The Doctor looked up from the controls he was fiddling with on the console, his mind full of a nascent idea for a modification to the TARDIS that he suspected was probably more trouble than it was worth. “So you said this morning,” he replied, confused. “That’s why we came back to your flat.”

“Right,” she said again, sounding tired. “I’m also going to have a shower, I think. Given... all _that_.” She gestured vaguely, evidently referring to the hours they’d just spent in Bristol and their encounter with the Boneless.

“Take your time,” he shrugged, most of his attention on the navigation system. Landing in Bristol had been entirely unintentional, and while he’d long since stopped questioning the TARDIS when she decided his presence was needed somewhere other than where he’d aimed for, it might be useful if the console could at least warn him that their destination had changed. Maybe if he rerouted the nav computer...

“Just don’t—” Clara’s voice broke in a way that he associated with _five-foot-one and crying_ , but when he glanced back at her, her expression was carefully blank, her gaze fixed in the middle distance. “Don’t _leave_ ,” she went on, steadier. “Stay where I can find you.”

He had thought that much was obvious, but she seemed to be waiting for an answer, so he said, “Yes, boss.”

She nodded once and stepped out into her flat, leaving the TARDIS doors open. It was a habit he didn’t usually engage in, leaving the doors open for anything other than coming and going — the TARDIS was safer with the real-time envelope sealed, and picked up fewer stray cats that way — but as with most things, exceptions could be made for Clara. For whatever reason, she wanted to know where he was, wanted assurances that the TARDIS wouldn’t leave without her, and keeping the doors open seemed like a simple way of achieving that.

For a time the Doctor lost himself in his tinkering, letting his thoughts wander as he began and then abandoned several different improvements to the settings and readouts. He heard the shower start and the water shut off a while later, heard Clara moving quietly around the sitting room just beyond the TARDIS doors, papers rustling and books closing. It was comforting in a way he hadn’t expected, the small connection of sound, knowing that his Clara was just outside, engaged in her own projects while he pursued his. 

He had never considered himself someone who enjoyed domestic life. He’d raised a family on Gallifrey, yes, but it was so long ago now that it felt like a dream, half-forgotten upon waking. Since then his relationships had been anything _but_ domestic, and he’d spent so many centuries running from everything boring and ordinary that he had never thought he could want anything else. There was always more of the universe to see, more to experience, people to save and civilisations to discover, and he had never been particularly adept at staying in one place. 

In many ways, Clara was a perfect match for him in that, as in so much else. After the Orient Express, they had hidden away in the TARDIS for a few days, but eventually the universe had called to them, and as often as not it was Clara leading the way out into the unknown. She was as insatiable as he was, despite her need for more sleep and frequent meals, and it had only been the realisation that they had been travelling nonstop for nearly a month that had finally convinced them to wrap up their honeymoon trip and find their way back to Earth, back to the normal life she’d left behind when they’d run off to get married.

But even in the midst of their extended honeymoon, one adventure flowing into the next, they had discovered a rhythm to their life together that hadn’t been there before, a pattern to their days and an ease with each other, existing in a dimension that belonged entirely to them. He shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to find that it continued here, unchanged whether set against the wonders of the universe or the mundanity of Clara’s flat. He still didn’t crave domesticity, would still rather skip over the boring days than experience time in a straight line. But with Clara there _weren’t_ any boring days. Just quiet, sweet in-between days where being with her was enough.

 _Too_ quiet, the Doctor realised, pausing with his hand half outstretched for the sonic screwdriver. The soft noises from the sitting room had stopped. No more slide of paper against paper or creak of sofa cushions. He held his breath, listening for any sounds from the flat outside, but was greeted with absolute silence.

Concerned, he got up from his workbench and went to the TARDIS doors and looked out. Clara’s school papers were still spread across the coffee table, but there was no sign of Clara herself. He stepped into the sitting room, frowning, and listened more intently. It hardly seemed likely that she would have left the flat without telling him, especially after asking that he not leave, either. Maybe she had just slipped into the bedroom for something? Gone to make herself tea?

Ah, there it was, the distant clink of dishes drifting down the hallway from the kitchen. He followed the sounds, anxious to see his wife again for reasons he couldn’t quite name. There was no logic behind this feeling, this worry that nagged at him for the few short seconds it took to walk down the hall and through the doorway to the kitchen. But he knew better than to dismiss that sort of gut-level instinct.

Clara was there, of course, a mixing bowl and whisk in her hands, her back towards him. The Doctor smiled at the sight of her, but his happy greeting stalled on the tip of his tongue when he caught another quiet noise in the stillness of the flat: a sniffle, wet and broken sounding.

“Clara?” he called to her, that instinctual worry ballooning into something much more fearsome. 

She startled at his voice, shoulders tensing, and turned to look at him across the width of the kitchen, her eyes red-rimmed and overlarge. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, her voice rough.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What are you doing in here?”

In one motion she swiped at the tearstains on her face and then gestured to the ingredients spread across the worktop, as though the latter would distract him from the former. “I’m making a soufflé,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the universe. Like she hadn’t clearly been hiding in the kitchen crying silently and hoping he wouldn’t notice.

Despite everything that had changed over the last weeks, he was still uncertain of what to do with _five-foot-one and crying_ , unsure of how to comfort Clara when confronted with unexplained tears. But her obvious deflection only made it clear to him that the one thing he _couldn’t_ do was leave her to cry alone. There had been points in their relationship when maybe he wouldn’t have called it out, when he might have allowed her to hide behind an excuse like that. But they were far beyond that, now. 

“Is there _usually_ this much crying involved in making a soufflé?” he asked, trying to keep his voice gentle despite his growing worry.

She huffed out an annoyed, tear-thick sigh and turned her attention back to aggressively whisking the batter in the mixing bowl. “It’s called stress baking, Doctor,” she said after a moment, not looking at him.

“I can see that. I’m just not sure I understand _why_.”

Clara sighed again. “Could you just—”

“No,” he said firmly, knowing what she was about to say. “No, I will not leave you alone in here to cry into your soufflé. Rule two: we don’t walk away from each other. So tell me what’s going on.”

He watched her in profile as she looked up at the ceiling, clenching her jaw and blinking back tears, and that instinctual worry snagged in his chest, growing ever larger. Whatever this was it seemed serious, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to abandon her to deal with it on her own.

“Honestly, Clara,” he pressed when she didn’t reply, “I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well tell me.”

“I was nearly widowed today!” she snapped in response, gaze back her on mixing bowl, her vehemence surprising him. “In _Bristol_ , of all places! When the TARDIS was on the tracks, and that train came and I couldn’t hear you anymore, I thought—” She cut herself off with a sharp shake of her head as tears filled her eyes again, channelling her emotions instead into stirring the soufflé batter with more force than necessary. 

_Oh_. He hadn’t given any thought to how that must have looked from her perspective. It had been a tense moment on his end, completely out of power, stranded with a train bearing down on him. He had only barely managed to put the TARDIS into siege mode with a fraction of a second to spare. And even then, his situation had still been dire, stuck inside the shrinking ship, life support failing, and no way to communicate with Clara. “You thought I’d—” 

“It’s rule one!” she interrupted him, whisk scraping harshly against the mixing bowl in the stillness of the kitchen. “Rule one is _no dying_! Regenerating would be bad enough, but something like _that_? Could you have even regenerated through it?” she demanded.

He blinked at her mutely, finally beginning to understand the source of her tears. In the rush of defeating their two-dimensional enemy, he hadn’t wanted to consider how narrowly they had avoided disaster, but thinking about it now, he knew she was right. If her gamble with harnessing the power of the Boneless hadn’t paid off, or if she hadn’t been so quick and clever in thinking of it, those might well have been his final moments. 

There in the midst of it, he hadn’t been able to face that reality, and had allowed himself only the vaguest of goodbyes to Clara, unsure if she could even hear him. But in retrospect the moment stood out vividly, a tipping point that could have just as easily gone the other way. And he had done that to her, to his Clara, frightened her and nearly abandoned her for good. There was no choice he would have made differently, no clue they had missed that would have allowed them to solve the mystery earlier and avoid the danger entirely, but he still felt the weight of the guilt of having put her through that.

“For as long as we get,” she went on, her tone sharp. “That’s what we agreed on. I just thought it would be longer than _four weeks_.”

Her words spurred him into action, and without pausing to second-guess himself, the Doctor crossed the kitchen towards her in a few long strides and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “Clara. _Clara_ ,” he said, stilling her frantic motion with the whisk, curling his chin over her shoulder and holding her close. “It _is_ longer than four weeks,” he said gently. “We’re still here. Both of us. We’re alright. We get longer than four weeks.”

For a moment it seemed as though she would argue the point, but then she sagged against him, leaving the mixing bowl on the worktop and leaning back against his chest. She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “I know. I know, it’s just— If I’d lost you today, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said, tears still thick in her voice. 

With his cheek pressed to hers, the Doctor caught what seemed to be the second half of that sentence, a fragment of a thought ricocheting through Clara’s mind, unspoken: _I don’t know what I would have told them._

“Told who what?” he asked without thinking.

She tensed in the circle of his arms, turning her head and pulling away just enough to break skin contact. “ _Doctor_ ,” she hissed, holding herself rigid.

Startled, he released her and stepped back, only just realising what he’d done. “Sorry,” he said in a low voice, shaking his head even though she still had her back towards him, her arms now braced against the edge of the worktop. “I forget, sometimes,” he said, “that you haven’t had any training in this sort of telepathic contact, that you don’t know how to shield your thoughts from me. I shouldn’t have—” He cut himself off, shaking his head again. “Sorry.”

Clara pushed to standing and swiped at the tears on her face. “You just surprised me is all,” she said levelly, turning to him. “I’m still not used to all, all _that_. Not used to being quite so transparent to you.”

He watched her for a long moment, wondering if she really didn’t know how much he still struggled to read her at times, even with their newfound telepathy. “I could show you how to guard your mind,” he offered, “how to block me out.”

She glanced up at him and shook her head, looking away again. “That is the _last_ thing I want. It’s an adjustment, is all. And I won’t adjust to it if I just construct new walls to hide behind. No more hiding, no more lying, that’s what we agreed, after all.”

“You’re still entitled to some privacy, Clara.”

“I don’t _want_ privacy from you,” she insisted. “Truly, I don’t. I want to share my life with you — my thoughts, my plans, my hopes and worries, all of it. Not just the good things, but the bad, too. And I am _trying_ , Doctor. It’s like I have to relearn everything now, I spent so long forcing myself to hide how I feel about you.”

“Since I told you I wasn’t your boyfriend,” he said, not quite a question.

“Since long before that,” she said seriously, looking up at him and holding his gaze. “Emma Grayling said something to me, when we were investigating Caliburn House, that made me realise how obvious I was about my feelings for you.”

“You’d known me barely a month at that point,” he said, scowling in confusion.

Clara raised an eyebrow at him. “And exactly how long did it take you?” She smiled a little and shook her head, saving him from having to pinpoint the answer to that question. “If something had happened to you today,” she went on, looking away and crossing her arms over her chest, clearly struggling with the words, “I don’t know what I would have told everyone else in my life. The people I work with, my dad and my gran, everyone I know. How I would have explained my grief to them. As far as they’re concerned, I just broke up with Danny a week ago. They don’t even know who you are, not really, not in the ways that count.”

“You want to tell them,” the Doctor said. “About me. About us.”

She sighed and considered it. “I should probably figure out a way to tell my family some version of the truth,” she said, finding his gaze again. “But everyone else? No, I don’t particularly want to tell them. They’re not entitled to this part of my life, I shouldn’t have to justify myself to them. But today just made it clear that...” She seemed to weigh her words for a moment, then said, “It made the disconnect between the two sides of my life starkly obvious. This morning when we decided to come back to Earth, I had every intention of teaching for a week before joining you in the TARDIS again. Now I don’t know if I could stand it, being away from you for that long, and you out there on your own, getting into who knows what sort of trouble without me.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “I’m not going to leave you here, Clara,” he said. “If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

“But— but you _hate_ staying in one place!” she objected, shocked. “You always have, and it only seems to have gotten worse since you regenerated.”

“It’s not just about me,” he shrugged. “The idea is to build a life together, yes? Well, part of your life is here, so part of my life is here, too. If you want to stay for a week to teach, we’ll stay.” 

“You would do that for me?” she asked, voice wavering.

“Clara, the far more dangerous question at this point is what I _wouldn’t_ do for you. Staying in London for a week at a time doesn’t even come close to making the list.”

She gazed up at him, her eyes large, tears beginning to form.

“Don’t, with the eyes,” he told her, trying to head off another round of crying. “How do you do that with the eyes? It’s like they inflate!”

“Shush, shut up,” she said, shaking her head and crossing the kitchen towards him. She rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, but rather than the kiss he expected, she pressed her forehead to his.

 _I love you_ ,he heard her voice say in his mind, the words coming through with such clarity that he was certain she was intentionally projecting them. But behind the words, he could feel the depth of her emotion as well, layered and complex in ways those small syllables could never encapsulate.

 _Every good day, every bad day_ , he told her, backing it up with his feelings for her as well.

She took a shaky breath into their shared space. “What do we think this one counts as?” she asked quietly. “Good day or bad day?”

“Well, we saved a lot of people,” the Doctor replied, “and neither of us died, so I think we have to mark it down as a good day. The murder of your soufflé notwithstanding.”

Clara huffed out a small laugh, still tear-tinged but sounding lighter than before. “You’re right, I’m afraid my attempt at _gently_ folding in the meringue didn’t quite go to plan.”

“Yes, well, that’s par for the course when it comes to your soufflés. It’s always something — burned or mangled or just _deflated_.”

She leaned back to look at him. “Someday I am going to make you a _perfect_ soufflé, and then you are going to have to take back every unkind thing you’ve ever said about my baking.”

“And when that day comes I will,” he said with a grin.

“Can’t you just sonic it or something?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at the abandoned mixing bowl, not moving away from him.

“The sonic doesn’t do soufflés, Clara.”

She shot him a cheeky look. “Well, maybe it ought to do.”

Smiling at her fondly, the Doctor leaned in to kiss her, letting his love for her seep through his skin and into hers. He could feel the open door between their minds, the connection that had sprung into existence when she had accepted his marriage proposal, but kept himself carefully on his side of the line, not wanting to overwhelm her again. Clara, it seemed, had other ideas, her consciousness barrelling through that door to meet his as she curled her fingers into the short hair over his collar and deepened the kiss.

It was still new to him as well, having Clara in his mind after so many years alone. He welcomed her in, wordlessly communicating all the joy he felt at her presence. The weeks since their wedding had been the happiest of his life, not because of the places they’d visited or the people they’d saved, but because of _her_. Because of Clara, and this little universe that existed only between the two of them, a dimension all its own.

When they broke apart for air, Clara settled back onto her heels, letting her hands slide down to rest over his hearts. “We get longer than four weeks,” she said, repeating his earlier words, “but it has been a _wonderful_ four weeks, hasn’t it?”

“The next four will be wonderful, too. Even if we spend the whole time here in London, doing boring things like murdering soufflés and teaching English literature to pudding brains.” He leaned down to press a light kiss to the end of her nose. “Our life doesn’t have to be all outwitting killer mummies and defeating invasions of two-dimensional beings. We can take the time for quiet days together, too.”

Clara gazed up at him for a moment. “I have an idea,” she said, smoothing her hands up to his shoulders and back down to his hearts. “Something that will put today solidly in the _good_ category.”

He raised his eyebrows at her in question, wondering if she was thinking what he was thinking — if she was also calculating how long it would take them to get to their bedroom on the TARDIS, or if they ought to make use of her flat’s bedroom instead.

“ _Not_ that,” she replied, laughing, “but I like where your mind is at, hold that thought for later. No, I was thinking...” She trailed off as she reached into the interior pocket of his coat and found it empty. Frowning slightly, she slid her hands into the exterior ones instead, rummaging through the contents of the bigger-on-the-inside pockets, clearly searching for something.

“Where’s the sonic?” she finally asked, up to her elbows in his coat pockets.

“I left it in the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, looking down at her with amusement. 

She huffed out a sigh, withdrawing her arms. “Amendment to the rule about keeping your mobile on you: keep the sonic on you, too,” she said, as she turned and left the kitchen.

He trailed after her, down the hall, into the sitting room, and through the open doors of the TARDIS. “What do you need it for?”

“Easiest way to find the song I want,” she replied obliquely as she located the sonic on his workbench.

“Song?” he asked, blinking at her in confusion.

She gave him a playful look as she brushed past on her way to the TARDIS doors. “Mmhmm.”

“Do you not just have it on your mobile, like a normal person?” he said, following behind her. “Or have you still not figured out how to use your music app?”

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “Besides, this way is much more fun.”

The Doctor lingered in the open doorway and watched as Clara crossed her sitting room. “What exactly are you up to?” he asked. 

She paused next to the wide bookshelf on the far wall, fiddling with the sonic. “Come dance with me,” she said, smiling at him over her shoulder.

“What?”

“I wanted to dance with you on the Orient Express, the day we got married,” she explained, still trying to find the right sonic setting. “There was that band doing covers of old Earth songs, and it was our honeymoon, and I wanted to dance with you. But then there was dinner, and champagne, and our private sleeping quarters...”

“And a killer mummy, and an AI with dubious moral ethics,” he added.

She laughed lightly. “Exactly. And I never did get the chance to dance with you. So—” She pointed the sonic at the radio on her bookshelf, which crackled to life and began to play something that felt like the 1940s, though he couldn’t quite place the song. Resting the sonic on the shelf beside the radio, she turned back to him. “Dance with me,” she said again, holding one hand out to him in invitation.

With his gaze fixed on Clara’s outstretched hand, the Doctor felt the moment draw out long, milliseconds stretching into millennia. So many of their adventures had begun this way, Clara beckoning him forward into the unknown, reaching her hand out to meet his. He could sense their future stretching away ahead of them, the as-yet unnumbered days that their life together would span, strung together by this one simple gesture, timeless in its simplicity but heavy with meaning. How many times had she offered him her hand, in all the days they had spent together? How many more times would she stand exactly like this, in all the days to come?

For one instant he hung there, suspended in the space between two heartbeats, and then he felt himself tilt forward, felt his body answering Clara’s call with the only response he could ever give her. It was the only truth that mattered, his hand in hers and the universe waiting to unfold before them. The death of a star, or the birth of a civilisation, or the quiet music echoing off the walls of Clara’s flat — it didn’t matter, so long as she was by his side.

 _Hold hands. That's what you're meant to do_ , he remembered telling Emma Grayling and Professor Palmer, that day at Caliburn House. _Keep doing that and don't let go. That's the secret._ Had he already been in love with Clara then, he wondered? Did he know that day that he had found the only hand he would ever want to hold again?

Time dilated, contracted, and his feet carried him across the short distance to Clara, the connection between their minds sparking to life as he slid his hand around hers. She smiled up at him and settled her other hand on his shoulder as his found the small of her back through instinct or some long-buried memory.

“I’m not sure I remember how to do this,” he told her, voice low.

“You’ll figure it out,” Clara replied confidently. She looked up at him, holding his gaze. “ _We_ willfigure it out. The same way we do everything: together.”

He sighed. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It _is_ easy, Doctor. It’s just me and you, no one to impress. All we have to do is sway a bit,” she said, gently urging him into motion, as the radio continued to croon in the background. “And maybe shuffle in a little circle here — mind the coffee table.”

“Yes, boss,” he said, following her lead, careful not to step on her bare toes with his boots.

“See? Easy as that,” Clara said as they fell into a slow rhythm in time with the music. She leaned into him, resting her head on his chest, and he held her closer in response.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“For what?”

“For not leaving me to cry on my own, earlier.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m pretty sure that’s part of the deal.”

“I wasn’t certain it would be part of the deal, with you,” she murmured. “But I’m glad it is.”

He hesitated then said in a similar tone, “I’m still not sure I’m any good at this.”

“Dancing?”

“Marriage. You said you feel like you have to relearn everything now — it’s the same for me. You are the furthest thing from transparent to me, Clara, and I haven’t the faintest idea how to handle any of this, really. I can promise I won’t leave you to cry on your own, but for everything else... We may just have to be patient with each other.”

“And figure it out together,” Clara added.

He smiled fondly, knowing the feeling would pass through his skin and into hers, even though she couldn’t see his face. “Exactly.”

They fell quiet for a time, swaying in slow circles in the small space between the bookshelf and the TARDIS. The song started again, but neither commented on it, content to lean into each other and let time pass around them unchecked. Little by little, the lyrics of the song filtered into the Doctor’s consciousness, repeated phrases catching his attention. He felt like he’d heard it before, the words tugging at a memory he couldn’t quite identify.

 _It’s still the same old story,_  
_A fight for love and glory,_  
_A case of do or die._

“What is this song?” he finally asked. 

“It’s from _Casablanca_ ,” Clara said, humming a few bars along with the radio.

“Right,” he said, the memory crystalising in his mind. One of their Wednesdays together, early on, when Clara had insisted he park the TARDIS and stay with her rather than take her out on adventure. They had sat side by side on the Maitland’s sofa and watched the old black and white film, while Artie and Angie were asleep upstairs. “That’s one of the ones you like, isn’t it?”

She nodded against his chest. “It’s been one of my favourites since I was little. My mum introduced me to it. I love that movie, but I always wished—” She stopped, chuckling to herself, and he couldn’t quite make sense of the fragmented thoughts that flitted through her mind before she spoke again. “I always wished that Ilsa had been brave enough to choose Rick instead of Victor, at the end,” she went on, looking up at him. “Brave enough to see through Rick’s lies and choose the life she _really_ wanted. And what do you know? When it came time for me to make my choice, I _was_ brave enough.”

“...To be clear, I’m Rick in this scenario?”

Clara laughed quietly and rested her head against his chest again. “Yes, Doctor.”

He was silent a long moment, thinking on the comparison, on the sort of lies he might have been willing to tell Clara to keep her safe, and the lies he had told her to keep her at arm’s length. How easily he could have lost her, just as Rick lost Isla, if Clara hadn’t been brave enough to insist on the life she really wanted, and demand he do the same. How narrowly they had avoided tragedy to arrive at this moment. 

“I’m afraid _Casablanca_ is a bit too ingrained in Earth culture, both in this century and for the next few thousand years, to go back and change the ending now,” he told Clara. “But we could visit the set while they’re filming, if you like. Maybe get you cast as an extra, even.”

“Hmm, tempting,” she replied, pressing closer to him as they continued to sway to the music. “But only if you do it with me. Seems like the sort of thing that would be more fun together.”

He made a face. “Not sure I’m the acting type.”

“Oh, nothing huge, no lines or anything. Just us in the background of a shot inside Rick’s Café Américain. And then, as long as _Casablanca_ survives, there will be a little bit of us on film. A little bit of evidence that we were here.” She looked up at him, something grave in her expression. “That we claimed this time as ours.”

 _For as long as we get_ , he heard in her voice, the open acknowledgement that however long they had together, it would always be too short. He wasn’t any more prepared to face it now than he had been earlier in the day, so he sidestepped her implication and said instead, “It might raise some questions, if anyone who knows you were to notice.”

Clara snorted derisively. “That’s assuming I’m even—” She stopped herself mid sentence, holding his gaze. He could feel the second half of that thought bubbling away under her skin, but carefully held himself back, offering her the privacy she had objected to earlier. She seemed to come to some sort of decision, then slowly and deliberately said, “That’s assuming I’m even still around for them to question.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, his eyebrows pulling together in confusion.

“I’ve been thinking about it the last few weeks and I...” She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “I don’t want to keep coming back here.” 

“Where?”

“Earth. London, my ‘normal’ life. I don’t want to waste the days I have with you on trivial things.”

“Clara, what we did today wasn’t trivial. You saved a lot of people. Might have stopped an invasion of our entire dimension.”

“I know, you’re right. And if the TARDIS thinks there’s trouble in twenty-first century London, or Bristol, or wherever, then I’m fine with stopping by. But I don’t want to have two lives anymore.” She swallowed nervously then said in a rush, “I’m going to resign from Coal Hill at the end of the term, just before Christmas.”

He peered down at her, trying to understand what she was saying without relying on their telepathy to hear her thoughts. “But you love teaching,” he pointed out.

Clara shook her head. “I love literature, and helping people, and I’m good with children. Becoming a teacher was a calculated choice, back when I thought I needed to create a life of my own separate from you. But I don’t need that life now, Doctor. I don’t _want_ it.”

“You don’t have to do this for me, or because you think I can’t stay in one place.”

“I’m not doing it _for_ you, daft old man,” she said, smiling at him fondly. “It’s not that I think I owe you this or that you’re demanding it of me. I’m choosing this because I want to spend this time _with you_. Because we only get so much time, and I don’t want to waste it on planning lessons or marking papers or trying to explain my life to small-minded people.”

“You’re certain about this?”

“I wasn’t this morning, I thought I’d try a week back before I decided, but even just being here, looking at my lesson plans, after the morning we had... I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t want to spend my days away from you, or force you to stay in London for a week at a time so I can teach. I want to get in the TARDIS and just _go_.”

“And cut all ties to your life on Earth?” he asked in disbelief, raising his eyebrows at her.

“When I told you on the moon that my future isn’t here on Earth, I meant it, Doctor. I’ve only grown more certain of that since we got married. I belong out there with you. I want to build our life together in the TARDIS, going wherever the whim takes us — wherever she thinks we’re needed.”

“But... your friends, your dad and your gran?”

“Like I said, I’ll find some version of the truth to tell them. And it’s not like we can’t stop by from time to time, come ‘round for dinner or something.” She looked up at him, a thoughtful line creasing her brow. “Do you do that? Do you come ‘round to people’s houses for dinner?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I do that?”

“I don't know. I thought you might find it boring.”

“Is it boring?”

She laughed. “I can’t imagine anything _ever_ being boring when you’re involved.”

From the direction of the kitchen, there came a distant trilling, half obscured by the music playing through the radio. The Doctor cocked his head to one side, listening for the sound again. “Is that your mobile ringing?” he asked. “What happened to rule seven: keep your mobile on you?”

“Whoever it is can wait,” Clara said firmly. “Everyone I care to talk to at the moment is right here.” Through their telepathic link, he felt her mood shift, plummeting like a missed step at the bottom of a staircase. “Doctor... Do you not want me to live on the TARDIS full time?” she asked before he could wonder at the direction of her thoughts.

“Are you kidding me?” he replied, his reaction too immediate to find kinder words. “You’re the one who always insisted on only travelling on Wednesdays! _Of course_ I want you to live on the TARDIS with me!”

A smile broke across her face, relief and joy that echoed back through the door between their minds. 

“Clara, this last month together — our life could be like that always. But only if that’s what _you_ want, too. Evenings like this,” he looked around her little sitting room, her school papers spread across the coffee table, the TARDIS settled snugly into one corner. “This can be part of our life, too. There aren’t any boring days when I’m with you, Clara. If you want to stay and teach, that won’t be boring, either.”

“I know what I want, Doctor. And I know now how to be brave enough to step up and take it. I want that life in the TARDIS with you, and I don’t want to waste any more time here than I have to.”

He watched her for a long moment, trying to gauge her emotions without intruding into her mind. “I just want you to be sure,” he said finally. “I don’t want you to have any regrets. I know what happened today scared you, but we don’t have to rush into this. You can take all the time you need.”

Clara drew in a deep breath and nodded. “There’s a month left until the end of term, and I have a few commitments I made weeks ago that I should keep. But after that?” She paused to consider, her gaze turning inward. “I’m ready to leave this behind, and build a life with you,” she said, looking up at him. “Just the two of us in the TARDIS, for however long we have together.”

Pausing their slow shuffled circles, the Doctor raised her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “For however long.”

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to have this done in time for the final day of Whouffle Week 2020, since it works so well with the day 7 prompt: dancing. I hope you enjoyed this very late addition to the Week, and go check out all the other lovely works in the Whouffle Week collection! 
> 
> Leave me a comment or a keyboard smash or an emoji to let me know what you thought of this fic. I have more stories in the works for this AU, so please subscribe to the series _For As Long As We Get_ to be notified of future parts!


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